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I haven’t posted in a while so here we go.  As I often do, this past Monday I went to Sancho’s Broken Arrow for $1 Music Monday. I usually don’t research the bands too much because they are always bearable and usually really good. On top of that, Sancho’s is one of my top three favorites places to go in Denver. This time there was no research needed anyway. The bands name explains it all. Bowiegrass plays all of our favorite David Bowie songs with a great bluegrass sound.

Before I get into the show, I should start by stating that every person in the band was on point the whole night and impressed me with their bluegrass skills. That being said some of the Bowie songs just didn’t translate well. I think that they had some potential but I just couldn’t get into some of them. I love it when cover bands stay true to the music but when you are changing the style completely it is alright to change the song a bit to fit your playing style.

Now that the critical part is out of the way, we should talk about the songs that they nailed. Top of my list was “Let’s Dance” and “The Man Who Sold The World”. I’m not the biggest fan of the song “Let’s Dance” or so I thought. Apparently, I do like the song just not how Bowie plays it. Bowiegrass, on the other hand, destroyed it! It was my favorite song they did. “The Man Who Sold The World” was great but isn’t it always? Due to the singers voice it sounded a bit more like the Nirvana version of the song which was perfectly fine by me.

All and all it was another good show at Sancho’s. As usual, the people, beer, service, etc… were all awesome. I don’t know if I’ll pay much more to see Bowiegrass but I would like to see the guys from Bowiegrass play a set of non-Bowie songs.

Last night I went to $1 music Monday at one of my favorite bars in Denver, Sancho’s Broken Arrow. I didn’t know much about the band that was playing except that they are set to open up for Ultraviolet Hippopotamus later this month. I had previously discovered my love for Ultraviolet Hippopotamus at this very same bar on another wonderful $1 music Monday and that knowledge alone was enough to get me to go without question and I’m glad I did.

As I walked towards the bar I could already hear the music a bit outside. Before I could pay my $1 I already knew what I was hearing. It sounded more like the Phish version of the song but it was unmistakably The Velvet Underground‘s, Rock & Roll. I’ve heard this song performed by a lot of bands before but this was, as Pierce Hawthorne would put it, “Streets ahead”! Although this version was very jammed out, in such a good way, you could always tell what they were playing, which in my mind is always a good sign for a jam band.

The rain and football might have kept the crowd a little on the small side but Hot Soup came prepared to jam. There were even points in the show where I thought I was listening to the James Brown band with that funky, funky sax / keyboard combination. They followed Rock & Roll up with some great original tunes like “Into The Light” which I’m liking more every time I listen to it. I don’t know their original tunes much at this point but now I’m excited to hear more. The band finished their first set with an inspired, energy and bass heavy cover of Cyril Ferguson’s Ya Mar that was, in my mind, led from start to finish by the bass player, Adrian Engfer. Sadly, I didn’t get to stick around for the second set but you better believe I’ll be at The Fox Theatre on my birthday (Sept 22) to see Hot Soup and Ultraviolet Hippopotamus! I hope to see you all there!

I just got back from Phish night one in Denver. What can I say. I feel like we all expected something great from this weekend but no one expected the first night to SSSSSShine the way that it did. So if you weren’t there, here’s the deal: S!!!! Every song played tonight started with the letter ‘S’! See for yourself:

Set 1

Set 2

1. Sand >
2. Simple ->
3. Steam >
4. Soul Shakedown Party ->
5. Seven Below >
6. Suzy Greenberg >
7. Scents and Subtle Sounds >
8. Slave to the Traffic Light >
9. Silent in the Morning >
10. Sanity
11. Sweet Adeline

Encore

1. Sabotage

This is just the first night of a three day run and I feel as if my some what outrageous expectations have already been met. The band put it best in their fourth ever cover of ‘Sabotage’, “I can’t stand it, I know you planned it!” Yes, we do know that you planned all of this and we could not be happier! Unless of course you could fix the traffic mess getting in and out but I guess that is just part of it. Anyway, it was and still is all worth it. I can not wait for tomorrow! As always my mind is racing about what they might play next, what story they may tell. It is getting colder out…they did play ‘Seven Below’ tonight….maybe a cold gust of wind will blow in an epic ‘It’s Ice’ encapsulated by a ‘Tweezer’.   I guess we will just have to wait and see/hear as the epic struggle to find the best show ever continues.

This past Saturday I attended the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest in Lyons, CO. When I first arrived the low-back lawn chairs and tarps covering every inch of grass brought flashes of Telluride Bluegrass to my head. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering they are both put on by Planet Bluegrass. The stage even looks like it was built by the same people.

At this point I must admit that I did not really know or care about any of the bands there except for Bob Weir. That said, here is how the day went. After getting a 1554, one of my favorites, and listening to a band, my friend and I made our way across the river and set up our hammocks. The rest of the day was spent relaxing to the gentle sounds of folk music only about 100 yards away. Many great people were met and many interesting conversations were had but when Josh Ritter came on stage it was game time. Nothing against Josh Ritter but it was only “game time” because Bob Weir was right after him.

Stocked up on beer and a bit of Makers Mark we made our way down to the soundboard. At first I didn’t like the idea of standing behind the soundboard but at this venue it sits in a pit so people can easily see over the heads of the music magicians. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Bob & friends seeing as this was the trios first show together. Of course I wanted lots of Grateful Dead as I’m sure most people did and we got it! Here is the set list from the show:

Set List

1. New Speedway Boogie
2. Friend Of The Devil
3. Ramble On Rose
4. When I Paint My Masterpiece
5. Catfish John
6. Tell Me Mama
7. Appaloosa
8. Big Bad Blues
9. Sugaree
10. Bird Song
11. Peggy-O
12. Uncle John’s Band
13. China Cat Sunflower >
14. I Know You Rider

It’s always hard to pick a favorite song in a show but given that it was Folks Fest and I love Bob Dylan (as does Bob Weir) “When I Paint My Masterpiece” was up there for sure. This show had a great mix of the festival, the musicians, and the location. We got a few Bob Dylan covers (“When I Paint My Masterpiece” and “Tell Me Mama”) which is always great but kind of expected at a folk festival. There was one Black Crowes song (Thank you Chris Robinson), “Appaloosa”, which was amazing and really set this set apart from other “normal” dead sets. It is easy to see the Grateful Dead’s love for Colorado in their song lyrics and I love to hear the crowd when those parts come around. This night was no exception although I would have liked to hear “Me and My Uncle” because “I’m as honest as a Denver man can be”. Finishing up the set with “I Know You Rider” is always a good idea when you’re in Colorado as was apparent from the roar in the crowd. This was a great experience and I would highly recommend Rocky Mountain Folks Fest to anyone. Below I’m including a list of songs I wanted to hear, thought we might hear, but ultimately did not.

Songs I wanted but didn’t get:

1. She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan)
2. Me and My Uncle (Colorado lyrics)
3. Dark Hollow (I’ve had a love affair with this song since I saw/heard Furthur play it 2011/02/12 at the 1st Bank Center in Broomfield, CO)
4. Bird Song to Jerry (They played Bird Song but I wanted them to use the male pronouns and thus sing the song to Jerry, Furthur style)

Last night I read a tweet from Y Combinator News which took me to the article “Who Does Facebook Think You Are Searching For?“. I recommend you go and read the article for yourself but here you will find what I got out of it.

1. Make sure you are using FireFox, Chrome / Chromium, or Safari
2. Make your browser show its Bookmark Toolbar. Instructions can be found here: FireFox Chrome Safari
3. Create a new bookmark in your Bookmark Toolbar folder. The name can be anything, I used “FB Hack”, and the url should be the following:
   javascript:(function(){var script=document.createElement(‘script’); script.type=’text/javascript’; script.src=’http://thekeesh.com/js/edges.js’; document.getElementsByTagName(‘body’)[0].appendChild(script);}())
4. Go to Facebook.com, login, click “Account” (brings down a menu), click “Account Settings” (takes you to a new page), click “Security” on the far left, DISABLE “Secure Browsing”
5. Click “Home” or “Profile” on Facebook (You really just need to leave the settings page and go to any other Facebook page so you aren’t using HTTPS/SSL anymore)
6. Click the bookmark that we made. It should be in your Bookmark Toolbar.

This will bring up a new “box” on the Facebook site. This will display who Facebook thinks you are following the most or who you most want to find out about. The more negative the number the more Facebook thinks you want to know about that person. I believe that this is used within Facebook to “improve” their search bar on their site. You will notice that if you keep searching for the same person over and over you progressively have to type fewer characters before they start showing up at the top of the results.

I hope these instructions have been easy enough. Let me know if you have any problems with this or find any cool tricks you can do with it.

This being the first post and all I thought that I should let you know what to expect around here. I’ll probably stick to code(PHP, SQL, JavaScript, Java, C, C++, etc…), Linux(Ubuntu, CentOS, general stuff, etc…), music/concerts(Grateful Dead, Furthur, Phish, etc…), snowboarding, my travels, and my company.